It’s no secret that getting on Twitter’s suggested user list will quickly drive a user’s follower numbers up, but thanks to O’Reilly’s Ben Lorica, we can now actually quantify this boost. Lorica, with the help of tools like Twitterholic and Twittercount, examined data from about 80 users who made it onto the suggested user list. On average, these users gained around 53,000 new followers after being on the suggested user list for a week. After 30 days, these users had gained almost 200,000 new followers on average.
According to Lorica’s data, even those suggested users who are relatively unpopular still gain around 45,000 new followers in the first week and 170,000 in the first month. The most popular new suggested users can get more than 370,000 new followers in 30 days.
Interestingly, suggested users who already started out with a large number of followers (25,000+) also gained more followers from getting onto the suggested user list.
Profit? Number of Followers Doesn’t Equal Influence
Lorica rightly warns that simply having a lot of users on Twitter does not equal having a lot of influence, but given how many Twitter users are fascinated by these numbers (and the number of quacks who spam us with get-lots of-Twitter-followers-quick scams), it is nice to see some good data for what a spot on the suggest user list is ‘worth.’
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